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Rita guides you through a most loving and sacred yoga practice. Her gentle nature and lightness allow for the most wonderful unfolding to take place in her class. As a fellow student and teacher I am always appreciative of her gifts and radiant smile she shares with others. ... Aarti Ganesh Read more...

The Monkey Mind

Patanjali says you have something permanent with you & that is called “The Monkey Mind.”

It is compared to a monkey drunk with the wine of desire, stung by the scorpion of jealousy and possessed with the demon of pride. Lust, greed, jealousy, anger, ego, tensions, reactions, grudges, depression, stress and strain are the symptoms of this mind. We suffer from these because we gave all the powers to the mind and made it our master. We are happy when the mind is cheerful. We are depressed when mind is gloomy. We are at the mercy of the mind that waxes and wanes. We consider ourselves nothing but mind.

WHAT IS MIND

Mind is what you make it with your thoughts. Mind is matter. It has no power of its own. Your thoughts create your mind. Every thought, emotion or word produces a strong vibration in every cell of the body and leaves a strong impression there. If you entertain healthy thoughts, you can keep good health. If you hold on to sickly thoughts in the mind, you can never expect good health, beauty and harmony. If the mind is healthy, the body will be healthy. Remember that the body is a product of the mind. If you hold on to vigorous thoughts, your body too will be vigorous. Thoughts of love, peace, contentment, purity, perfection and divinity will make you and others around you perfect and divine. Otherwise, we will be the victim of mental and heart diseases.

TRAIN THE MIND

The human mind functions within a certain field. Your mind works only within the boundaries of the field of whatever you have previously heard, seen, thought of or imagined. Maharishi Patanjali says that you can cross that field by training your mind and all its faculties so that you can go beyond.

According to Maharishi Patanjali, the mind (Chitta) is made up of three faculties – Manas (Mind & Memory), Buddhi (Intellect) and Ahamkara (Ego). Manas are the recording faculty, which receives impressions gathered by the senses from the outside world. Buddhi is the discriminative faculty, which classifies these impressions and reacts to them. Ahamkara is the ego-sense, which claims these impressions as its own and stores them up as individual knowledge. For example, your teacher tells you to do Kapalbhati Pranayama. She also reminds you that always start with slow speed. Your mind listens to that & your intellect confirms in the same manner. But after some time your ego stars reacting. It notices that the teacher is doing much faster & why can’t I do the same way. Hence, ego becomes the spoiler & it always needs to be controlled & trained.

HOW TO TRAIN THE MIND

That monkey mind always gets in your way and creates barriers for you. One day it helps you to understand something and then the next day you undo the same thing. One moment you think you have known something; after half an hour, the same mind will say you have not known anything.

Sometimes you think you are going toward insanity; sometimes you think you are doing very well. That monkey mind comes between you and realization. There is no attempt, however, to control the mind; the idea is to go beyond it through meditation. Meditation is where thoughts get dissolved naturally, enhancing your concentration power, memory power, will power, right thinking and fitness power automatically. Meditation is neither a mental exercise nor a practice. It is a direct and natural process beyond mind itself.

MEDITATION

The mind is always full of all types of thoughts. It continues like this from birth to death because there is no switch to turn it off. Meditation helps in controlling the mind. By doing regular meditation, it is possible to put a switch on the mind & turn it off when it is not needed. In fact, it teaches us how to manage the mind just by witnessing it through neutral energy. It is not interfering with the intricacies and doings of mind. Just remain a non-doer and directly watch the thoughts neutrally, without any judgment, analyses, participation, visualisation, imagination, contemplation, suppression, repression, condemnation or concentration. To watch is our true nature. It is a natural, non-doing state. No effort is required to watch. We all have full potential to look within directly as we all are blessed with the 'Third Eye'. It is not forcing the mind to be quiet; it is to find the quiet that is there already.

TECHNIQUE

Adopt any comfortable sitting position… Close the eyes… Relax your body part by part mentally... Be still… Withdraw the mind from the outside world… Direct the mind within oneself towards breathing… Breathe slowly, deeply & regularly… If thoughts come into your mind from time to time, just go on watching those thoughts …. Do not identify with them... Do not get friendly with them…Do not argue with them… they will go away…keep a distance from the thoughts… Feel as thoughts are yours but you are not the thought… Just like your shadow is yours but you are not the shadow… just keep deleting all the undesirable thoughts… do not let those thoughts come back to you… (It is like watching a film. If we do not like the film, we do not remember the story. As soon as we come out of the cinema hall, we forget the story because we don’t need t)... If we do not, it means that we are carrying an extra burden in our mind & that makes our mind weak & diseased mentally as well as physically… Give your conscious mind a rest…. There is a state of mind where you have no thought…Only consciousness remains… if you can experience this state you can experience strength, power, creativity, courage, confidence, decisiveness, happiness … This is Pure Existence.

CONCLUSION

With more & more meditations, monkey mind starts learning to be silent. Once it knows that by being silent it becomes powerful, energetic, positive then mind is a good servant of immense power in the hands of silence. Then the being is the master & master can use the mind whenever it is needed & can switch it off whenever it is not needed.